Love Throughout The Ages Themes

This was an exercise we did in a lesson where we were given statements and we linked them to poetry

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  • Created by: Dracupine
  • Created on: 07-04-13 17:24

Bucolic (A pastoral poem)

 Love can offer her a life of bucolic, pastoral bliss, if only the chosen woman will follow her man. 

The Passionate Shepherd to his love

"Come live with me and be my love"

Promise to live with her, no maraige, is it as romantic as it seems?

but maybe indicating that love does not always lead to marraige or that marraige kills love?

"That hills and valleys, dales and fields, 

And all the craggy mountain yields"

(personification of nature, way of persuading, irresistable)

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Intense Love

Love can be so intense and overpowering it can be like a violent life and death struggle

Love song---------Ted Hughes

"she bit him she gnawed him she sucked"

rule of 3

"Her smiles were like spider bites 

So he would lie still till she felt hungry"

Animalistic, violent, compelling, cannot escapw this love/feeling/lust

"...but love is hard to stop...in their entwined sleep...in their dreams..."

unconsciously still together as one. 

like a war/ battle between two lovers

lack of punctuation in poem. 

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lack of self-belief

Some people are unable to find love because in a fragmented, broken world it can be impossible to have the courage and self-belief to commit oneself to another person

Love Song of  J. Alfred Prefrock----T.S. Elliot

"Do I dare? and do I dare?"

insecure. has a desire but uncertaun

subconscious

"do i dare

disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time"

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Love after death

Love can be so powerful that it is in  every aspect of one's life with God's help will only increase in the afterlife

Sonnet of the Portuguese XLIII

"I love thee with a love I seemed to love

With my lost saints, -I love thee with the breath, 

Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose, 

I shall but love thee better"

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1st love

First love is so intense that it is difficult to control your body and the whole world seems different, taking the heart to a new place. 

First Love----John Clare

"My face turned pale a deadly pale 

My legs refused to walk away"

Pain and suffering when in love

"My life and all seemed turned to clay"

Medusa, Greek mythology

(Shekespeare)

"My heart has left its dwelling place 

And can return no more-"

no finish, follow on to story

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Tired

The power of love is such that eventually it wears you out and it can no longer be sought out. 

so, wel'll go no more a-roving---Lord Byron

"For the sword overwears its sheath, 

And the soul wears out the breast, 

And the heart must pause to breathe, 

And love itself have rest..."

each line in itself symbolises how the author is tired and worn out

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Eternity

It is a great anguish that it seems that love must be defeated by time like all earthly things, but a poem can make it live forever.

Sonnet 18-------Shakespeare

"So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, 

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

Poem keeps the lover alive through memory and by reading this poem

compared at begining to things which go in a cycle, live and die i.e. flowers in may and a summers day

Sonnet 75----------- Edmund Spencer

"To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse your virtues rare shall eternalise"

A famous poem shall be your answer to eternal life

"Where whenas Death shall all the world subdue

Our love shall live, and later life renew."

our love shall be eternal and kown by others

element of trut as all die

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Greatest thing on earth

Love can be so wonderful that the couple can feel that their love is greater and more powerful than any king or the mighty forces of the cosmos

Sonnet 29----Shakespeare

"For thy sweet love remembered sych wealth brings

That thgen I scorn to change my state with kings."

our love is greater than the wealth of kings

The Sun Rising----John Donne

"Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,

And thou shalt hear 'All here in one bed lay'."

He is like every king, you love makes him as rich and powerful

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Rejection

Being rejected in love by a beautiful, but cruel women an leave a man in a astate of utter lifeless misery

How can I forget thee----John Clare

"That farewell voice of love is never heard again, 

yet I remember it and think o it with pain:"

Stuck with a memory which only causes pain

In a vicious circle, transfixed by his one-sided love

"Twas here she said farewell and no one yet 

Has so sweet spoken - How  can I forget"

Haunted by his love, no-one can replace her or make him forget

La Belle Dame Sans Merci----John Keats

"O what can ail thee, knight at arms, "

repeated on 1st line in verse 1 & 2

" O what can ail thee, knight at arms, 

So haggard and so woe-begone?"

His appearance, negative illustrating & exacerbating his pain

"I saw pale kings and princes too, 

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

Who cried- 'La Belle Dame sans Merci

Hath thee in a thrall"

shows how not only one who has suffered at the hands of love

bewitched by a womans beauty by the lake

"I saw their startved lips in the gloam

With horrid warning gaped wide,"

Warnings of not to fall in love due tp the pain, but it is always too late, 

love and pain are inevitable?

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